The campaign resulted in 3.5 million page views, many new members for the German Red Cross, €12,000 in donations and huge media coverage – online as well as offline. The money and awareness the initiative generated did not only help many homeless through a long and hard winter. It also sparked a conversation across all channels about how homeless people are excluded from German society as a whole.

Creative Execution

We took street musicians from a place they were ignored at (local stores) to the one place people least expected to see them: the internet. To do so we filmed 50 street musicians and turned their touching performances into interactive banners. This way for the first time street musicians did not play in front of shops. They played in front of online shops, surprised online shoppers could not only enjoy the music, but they could also donate money as easy as on the street. One click was all it took to support projects for the homeless – or to share the whole experience via social networks. Our beggars not only had their own Facebook page. They were also featured on a dedicated microsite, where people could read about their lives and listen to more music. And thanks to our PR campaign there was a big media echo online and offline.

There are 300,000 homeless people in Germany, many of them street musicians. Their problem: today passers-by are more concerned with themselves or their online devices and give less and less money. Our goal was to give street musicians their audience back and raise money to support the German Red Cross‘ projects for the homeless.